Glimpses from Gaza
Its hard to put words together so fast – but here are some, these really are just glimpses of Gaza..
I start talking to her amidst the chaos of 40 ppl being assigned to a dozen or so young Gazan’s for homestay over the coming days. “Hi” “Hi” “I like your style, i hope you’re with me”. I’m flattered, thinking my fezza hair – self-chopped in the bathroom mirror a few days ago – would be ridiculous by Gazan standards. But its only the start of preconceptions slowly shifting into seeing pieces of Gaza’s reality. We are in luck, and a few minutes later my 17-yr-old host is shouting arguments at our groups Hamas security entourage at the hotel gates. Stunned, gaping jaw, i look on.
In the taxi she tells us, kind of ashamed, that they have a problem with the electricity at her house – its been cut since the attacks and they rely on a generator which is sometimes unreliable. We reassure her that its fine, taken aback that she is explaining this out of concern for us. As we arrive at her apartment block she points to the empty block on the other side of the (dirt)rd, directly opposite her building, “it was destroyed in the last war”. Peering in the dark i notice the concrete remnants. Her house is nice, normal, if it had a yard and wasnt on the 8th floor it could well be the inside of small Australian suburban home. Except that all the windows on one side of the house are missing, patched up with garbage bags.
Her family are unbeleivably lovely, almost like in the brady bunch. The siblings – a funny one, a shy one, a smart one, and a helpful one. Her mum smiles and laughs at the funny one and our miscommunications, and won’t hear of us going without second dinners. Her father – perhaps a little shocked that we actually showed up – is warm, friendly and clearly excited to have foreigners to talk his perfect english to. He first explains the windows – they have the money to fix them but theres no glass in Gaza to do it with. He is a surgeon, used to work in Jerusalem, but originally from Gaza. Their family has land here – grape vines, olive trees, chickens, tomatoes, he says he’ll bring eggs for us tomorrow. I double-take realising, and commenting that these will be the first free-range eggs i eat in the middle east. I smile, he says they always taste better than eggs from a cage. “Happy chickens” i say, he laughs. Then, naively, the question i need to confirm – can they leave? “mm, if you get permission from Egypt or Israel, have the right papers and a passport, a medical certificate and evidence of the appointment, maybe you can go” Like the question of leaving Gaza for any reason other than medical necessity is irrelevant, doesn’t even enter the realm of possibility. Naively – “what about to visit family in the West Bank?” “No way! No way. Look – my wife had an appointment with an egyptian doctor, a specialist, she tried for 4 days to leave, everyday she went, and eventually she succeeded, she went but it took 4 tries”.
In the morning i look out the window over the stunning Gazan coast line, yellow sand and blue sea, scattered with medium-size apartment blocks amidst unbelievably productive urban farms – rows of olives, vegetables, shade-houses, chickens. It gives me so much hope. And thats something i never expected to wake up to in Gaza. This city-sprawl has so much potential.
We visit Northern Gaza – the areas most devastated by the attacks. A faint smell of burning rubber, later explained as the explosive residue, a donkey and its calf taking cover in the rubble of a flattened international school, a mangled plastic slide, english and math exercises blowing in the wind, wrought iron and electricity wires dangle loose from smashed up concrete barely recognisable as the remains of walls. I think – maybe i sat next to the guy who flew the plane and pulled the trigger on my way to work in January, drank beer next to the officer who ordered it, ate hummus with the intelligence guy that made the decision to destroy it. A flood of memories from life in Tel Aviv during the attacks comes back, flashing against the reality before me, the sunny afternoons at streetside cafes, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice, evenings tipsy by the beach, the jam-packed trains carrying soldiers to and fro. And i see this street how it was then, dust blowing, plane screaming, people running, nowhere to go, earth shaking, building falling.
I snap back and approach the group crowding around the school’s principle “.. absolute lie that the school was ever used for rockets, its completely ridiculous. We teach openness, free expression, the American curriculum the same as you, absolutely unbelievable that it was targeted. I think the reason is that the Israelis want to maintain the image of Palestinians as the militant holding a machine-gun. We have students who study at Harvard, at other US universities. This doesn’t please the Israelis, they want to maintain that image and fear of Palestinians… We haven’t yet received a single dollar, not from the government in Gaza, not from the government in Ramallah, not from USAID… It was intentional not a mistake. The Israeli’s didn’t deny that they bombed it – they said it was targeted because weapons were stored there and rockets launched from there. The $10 million question is why they bombed the school. Its completely insane. This question you should ask the Israelis.”
A family living in the bombed out ruins of their former home offer us tea off their 44 gallon drum fire. It feels ridiculous taking anything from these people who have lost everything. Even the tent city that rose out of the rubble here has succumb to the 3-month continuation of the blockade, now just remnants – wisps of material, barely standing, slowly drowning in the sands of Gaza. And yet, still, nothing has been rebuilt.
We visit a Palestinian Medical Relief Society rehabilitation centre. A father talks with us, his 2 sons on either side, one holds crutches. The father tells that he lost his house and 2 of his four sons in the attacks, the two by side were badly injured. The boy holding the crutches, about 12, gets up – only then do i notice that he’s missing a leg. His brother, maybe 8, rolls up his pants and shows a shrapnel wound gouging a deep hole in his upper thigh. The wounds are healing. But the kids faces tell otherwise. They try to smile at us, we try to smile at them, hoping to give support, solidarity, hoping to give strength and not sympathy.
